Metro News & Reviews

Expo Line: temporary service disruption

Riders: This service alert was just issued a few minutes ago. If you are planning on using the Expo Line early Friday, the best place to get up-to-date information is Metro’s Twitter feed featuring service alerts or Metro’s Facebook page.

Temporary Service Suspension btwn Jefferson/USC-7th/Metro

Description

As of 11:30pm Thursday, Metro Expo Line has been suspended between Jefferson/USC and 7th St/Metro Ctr due to major damage to an overhead power pole caused by an unrelated auto accident. This disruption is expected to continue into Friday due to the extent of the damage. Initial reports are the car sheared the pole foundation bolts and crews may not be able to put a pole up in time for Friday morning service due to the foundation not being salvageable.

Due to limited railcars available west of the incident location, Expo Line btwn Culver City and Jefferson/USC will run approx every 20 min with 2-car trains until further notice

Related

Actually, trains are running from Expo/USC station. No trains are rubbing to Jefferson/USC. Bus bridge from Pico Station took us directly to Expo/USC Station where trains are heading back in westbound direction.

Another delay on the Expo Line?? This line should have been built as an Elevated railway or underground… The Expo train stops too often between USC and downtown and Culver City, service must be up in time for by 5am Friday for Friday morning commuters to downtown!! I will not ride the line if there’re so many delays… Thank You

They were able to perform emergency repairs and get the line running for the morning rush hour. A wrong-way car hit a pole holding up overhead wire — an unusual accident. The line was built at street level to help save money. Some of the frequent stops are due to traffic signals, some the proximity of stations — in particular USC/Expo Park and Vermont and Farmdale and La Brea.

Hi Lance, I ride the Expo line every morning and evening. It is very fast and efficient. The trains go faster than the street traffic. The trains are comfortable and I can relax and read. Can’t wait until Expo goes all the way to the ocean! This is the best thing that ever happened for me in my 23 years of commuting this route!

I think that the Expo Line is great. Obviously, underground heavy rail is best, followed by grade-separated light rail. But sharing streets with autos is better than nothing. I grew up in Cincinnati and two of the tragedies in my hometown’s history were when the planned subway along the line of the route of the Miami/Erie Canal was cancelled between the World Wars; and when the streetcars and Mount Adams incline were abolished in favor of exclusive reliance upon buses. My parents would talk about the streetcar and point out the openings to the abandoned subway tunnel along I-75, but for me I could only dream while waiting in traffic jam, or hoping that the Queen City Metro bus wopuld not be too late.

Couldn’t agree with you more about my hometown’s decision regarding the Central Parkway subway and the inclines. Look at Pittsburgh — they saved their inclines and now they’re iconic. I’m hoping the planned streetcar helps revive Cincy’s downtown, which still has quite a few lovely old buildings.

In the meantime, go Reds and go Bengals! At least Cincy has a baseball and football stadium that are easy to walk to from downtown proper unlike a certain city I’m looking at outside the MTA building’s windows right now.

I agree with Lance. What ever happened our nation’s ability to long term planning and vision with respect to public transit infrastructure? In the 1968 there were amazing plans to build rapid transit trains like the current purple and blue line along four to five major corridors across the county. They would have run in exclusive right-of-ways in both subway, at-grade, and elevated viaducts. This system would have rivaled BART in the Bay Area. Here is that plan from 1968; it makes me so sad what we could have had: http://libraryarchives.metro.net/DPGTL/scrtd/1968_final_report.pdf

How come I feel like we’ve regressed by building more light rail, which almost always ends up being slower than heavy rail (with the exception of the Metro Green Line) due to running in mixed traffic. How come we’ve given up on trying to build a system that uses heavy rail with exclusive right-of-ways?

I love the Metro and I hope a round two Measure J proposal can come out on a future ballot, but can we just work to build more lines like that of the Purple and Red Lines? Can we at least build light rail lines so that they can at a future date be upgraded to heavy rail? We need to focus on improving speeds on all the lines. I feel so embarrassed when I show friends from Asia our Metro system as they’re flummoxed by our inability to build a world class rapid transit system and instead implement slow light rail lines.